Menu writing lesson 9 – spelling and grammar

A menu is a sales and marketing tool and is a reflection of the chef and your operation. It is therefore extremely important that you present it in the best way possible way and avoid simple mistakes such as bad spelling and/or grammar. Here, John Wood gives some top tips.

Basic checks

There are a number of basic checks that are extremely useful that we’ve listed below along with some common mistakes to avoid. Many mistakes occur because proof reading is not thorough, often skipping through the text without focusing on each word.

KC Top Tip

always read your menu backwards this will make you focus on each word individually and not just as part of the sentence.

If there is any rule, at least try to be consistent and then the reader will see that you are doing it on purpose. It’s worth noting that many restaurant and food journalists do not always appreciate this and prefer menus to be grammatically correct.

Apostrophes and speech marks

Which of the following is correct?

Goat’s cheese

Goats’ cheese

Goats cheese

There are three arguments here about which should be correct:

Goat’s cheese – goat is singular because we are referring to it as a species; one species.

Goats’ cheese – the milk comes from a number of goats, so we treat goat as plural

Goats cheese – the goat is being used as an adjective to describe the variety of cheese

In each case they are all probably right in some way or another. Again, the advice is to be consistent across all your menus.

Speech marks & bold copy

Using “speech marks” on menus can be unnecessary but they can be used effectively to highlight a part of the dish.
Words can be highlighted by bold writing in any part of the dish you would like to highlight or just by using boxing in the whole description.
Again avoid excessive use of “speech marks” or bold highlighting, as it can be annoying to read and instead of drawing the reader’s eye, they no longer register its use.